Tag Archives: review of Hashtagged by Kimberly Hix Trant

One by one, we substitute tweets and Instagrams for human contact while something watches, guiding us deeper into isolation while it shapes a new future for humanity with each new hashtag.

To Maddy Smith, a strange box offers one last puzzle from her father. What lies within is a mystery. Try as Maddy might, the box will not open.

Seeking the help of her father’s friends, the enigmatic Dinner Club, Maddy travels across the United States, receiving new clues with each meeting. As she draws closer to solving the puzzle, she discovers that her father had a secret plan for her—training her to fight against artificial intelligence.

Together with Jagger, her occasional lover, Maddy follows the clues to a campground just

outside of Roswell, New Mexico. What awaits her will determine whether humans control

artificial intelligence or IT controls us.

My Rating: 4 stars!

Hashtagged is a novel about artificial intelligence and the possibilities of how it could end up affecting the future. This is a story about Maddy, the daughter of a “computer whiz” who finds herself in a mystery regarding the work her father was consumed in his entire life. When he is found dead, she is forced into finding the answers to what happened….and finds herself in a situation much more involved than she had ever bargained for!

This book is the first in a series. It starts out a bit slowly, which is necessary for background information. By the middle of the book, the story line picks up its pace and you are soon swept away by the intrigue that Maddy is involved in. Time travel, robots that are much too human and villains that strive to take over the world are just a handful of problems Maddy, her father and their lifetime friends must tackle. What makes it interesting is that Maddy’s father and friends were the main players in creating the artificial intelligence in the first place! By the end of the book, they are greatly regretting what they’ve done and trying to take preventative future measures!

This book does keep the reader interested. If you are into computers and technology, you’ll love this book. The characters are well developed and the plot is too. You will probably find yourself wondering if this could really happen some day. It is definitely a scary possibility…….